Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center

The 2009 HPCwire Readers' Choice Awards recognize accomplishment within the global community of computational science

PORTLAND, OR., November 16, 2009 - The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) has received the 2009 HPCwire Reader's Choice Award for Top Supercomputing Achievement. The award recognized PSC's work as part of the National Institutes of Health's Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) project, which supports research to simulate disease spread and evaluate intervention strategies.

Pursuant to this project, PSC scientist Shawn Brown has modeled the spread of the H1N1 virus in various locales, including the United States, the Washington, DC metropolitan area, and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which includes Pittsburgh and surrounding communities. The modeling helps policy-makers and public-health officials to evaluate the effectiveness of mitigation strategies, such as vaccination and school closure.

In this work, Brown collaborates with the Pittsburgh MIDAS Center of Excellence, led by Donald Burke, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. This group is studying fundamental questions about the behavioral, environmental and evolutionary factors underlying infectious disease epidemics to develop real-time models for particular localities, cities and states.

HPCwire is a news service for high-performance computing (HPC) and computational science that serves an international community. "This award, which represents a partnership between the HPCwire global readership and our publishing team, is a salute from the global HPC community," said Tomas Tabor, publisher of HPCwire. "Being selected as an award recipient means that you are at the top of mind of HPCwire readers, editors, and luminaries in the field. I'd like to congratulate PSC for being selected by our readers for a 2009 award."

The HPCwire Readers' and Editors' Choice Awards are determined through a survey conducted by HPCwire, online polling of the global HPCwire audience, along with a rigorous selection process involving HPCwire editors and industry luminaries. The awards are an annual feature of the publication and constitute recognition from the global HPC community. These awards are revealed each year to kick off the SC conference, which showcases high-performance computing, networking, storage, and data analysis. The full list of winners for the 2009 awards can be found at the HPCwire website (http://www.HPCwire.com).